《岂力马扎罗的雪》中真实性的分量【毕业论文】.doc

1、 本科毕业论文 （ 20 届） 英语 岂力马扎罗的雪中真实性的分量 The Weight of Authenticity in The Snows of Kilimanjaro 诚 信 声 明 我声明，所呈交的论文 (设计 )是本人在老师指导下进行的研究工作及取得的研究成果。据我查证，除了文中特别加以标注和致谢的地方外，论文 (设计 )中不包含其他人已经发表或撰写过的研究成果，也不包含为获得 或其他教育机构的学位或证书而使用过的材料。我承诺，论文 (设计 )中的所有内容均真实、 可信。 论文 (设计 )作者签名： 签名日期： 年 月 日 授 权 声 明 学校有权保留送交论文（设计）的原件，允许

2、论文（设计）被查阅和借阅，学校可以公布论文（设计）的全部或部分内容，可以影印、缩印或其他复制手段保存论文（设计），学校必须严格按照授权对论文 (设计 )进行处理，不得超越授权对论文（设计）进行任意处置。 论文 (设计 )作者签名： 签名日期： 年 月 日I 摘要 岂力马扎罗的雪是海明威最著名的短篇小说之一。 它主要讲述了一个作家在临死时回忆一生中未写作的片段和经历这一故事。由于故事结构的复杂性，现有文献中对主角的分析不一，以致产生了对主人公哈里多种不同甚至相反的评价。因此，本文尝试使用一种统一的视角检视主人公的个性特征。通过哈里作为观察者和作者这两种身份时的真实性来分别进行阐述。通过这一分析，

3、本文厘清了现存的各种相反或相对的观点，并且得出结论，即作为观察者的哈里一直保持着他的真实性，而作为作家的哈里在死前完成了向真实性的转变。 关键词： 岂力马扎罗的雪；真实性；拖延 II Abstract The Snows of Kilimanjaro is one of Hemingways most famous short stories. It is a story about a dying writer looking back on a lifetime of unwritten stories. Due to the complexity in the structure of

4、the story, analyses of its main character Harry vary in existing literature, which leads to different, even sharply contrasting ways of evaluation. Therefore, this article ventures to examine the protagonist in a unified point of view. This is achieved through looking at the character in the light o

5、f his authenticity both as an observer and as a writer. Through this examination, it clarifies various conflicting points of view that currently exists, and arrives at the conclusion that Harry is an authentic observer who has been transformed to an authentic writer before his death. Key words: The

6、Snows of Kilimanjaro; authenticity; procrastination III ContentsAbstract . II 1. Introduction: . 1 2. The Psychological Weight of Authenticity . 2 2.1 Harry as an Authentic Observer . 2 2.1.1 To Face the Unfamiliar . 3 2.1.2 To Face the Incongruous . 4 2.1.3 To Face the Futility of Theorizing . 5 2.

7、2 Harry in his Struggle to be an Authentic Writer . 6 2.2.1 Resistance from the Public . 6 2.2.2 Resistance from Loved Ones . 7 2.3 The Transition before Death . 8 3. Conclusion . 8 Bibliography . 10 Acknowledgments . 101 1. Introduction: The Snows of Kilimanjaro is one of Hemingways most famous sho

8、rt stories. The frame of the story is about a writer named Harry who was dying of gangrene on a remote plain of Africa.(Logsdon, 29) While on a safari with his girl friend, Harry received a slight wound which resulted gangrene in his leg, and with their truck broken down they were stranded, with lit

9、tle prospect of immediate help. Dying a slow but painless death, Harry called back to memory a lifetime of stories that he had postponed to write(Logsdon, 30) and realized that he would never have a chance to write again. Through the reminiscence of the protagonist, Hemingway presents a montage of i

10、mages recollected from his own past(Bonds, 132), including his wartime experience, past love affairs, and life of men and women in the poor quarters of Paris. These accounts also form a concrete part of the story. This type of story-telling, which resembles the ancient style of “frame tale”, allows

11、the author to integrate a vast amount of diversified “sub-stories” and scattered accounts into a fluent whole, following the flow of consciousness of Harry. But due to the set-up of the story, a confusion was created as to where to draw the line between the writer and the protagonist. And it is also

12、 not immediately clear to what extent can Harrys characteristics be attributed to his creator. The two different points of view, which separate and converge at different points with the development of the story, has lent a vagueness to the relationship between the character and the author. Different

13、 understandings of this particular relationship, or lack of concern of it, has led to differences of the overall interpretation in the philosophy of the whole story, which spans both the negative and positive extremes of the same spectrum, and leads to disparity of interpretation in the smallest det

14、ails. For instance, Mller described Harry as an “inauthentic self” that Hemingway is symbolically killing off.(Mller, 38) Stoltzfus regards Harry as a declining writer, and Hemingway, as Harrys creator, “understands the flaws in both their lives.”(Stoltzfus, 218) According to Ibaez, Harry is a self-

15、destructive writer who feeds on his own rotten and invented lies.(Ibaez, 105) In Li Yanan and Ou Lins point of view, however, Harry is “neither a hero nor a coward”(Li, 94) but a normal person at the mercy of his painful memories imposed by his time. The discrepancy has led to disparity in interpret

16、ations on various levels. For example, Stoltzfus reasons that The Snows of Kilimanjaro is about “failure, bad faith and Hemingways recuperation of failure”.(Stoltzfus, 217-218) And the frame narrative is thus veiled with a negative atmosphere - “He is angry, he quarrels with his wife, he hallucinate

17、s, and he dies.”(Stoltzfus, 217) Mller described the central theme 2 of Harrys flashbacks as “the problematic ideal of doing the right thing”(Mller, 35). With this confusion it is relatively hard to pin down the philosophy that the story-teller holds. Therefore, the aim of this paper, is to try to c

18、larify the tangle in the mixed points of view, by sticking with a single characteristic, authenticity, which shines through the recollected scenes as well as the frame narrative. Through this single point of view, it seeks to clarify the confusion created by the frame structure of the story and reac

19、h a new understanding about its protagonist. 2. The Psychological Weight of Authenticity Waiting for his death to come on the African plain, Harry recollects a lifetime of stories which he had never written. They include his memories about war, his love affairs and the life of men and women as he wi

20、tnessed in the poor quarters of Paris which he used to live. Diversified as they are, they are usually bound together in separate “bundles” by a shared element. The first batch of these accounts, for example, is bound by a shared image of snow, from the snow that killed people to that which he skied

21、 on. There are even a frame story within the existing narrative frame a quarrel with his woman in Paris for him to put in other accounts of experience including the one about “poppy field horror”, which is to be discussed later. And the rest are introduced with reference to the main frame. For insta

22、nce, when Harry was contemplating his own painless death, he remembered the officer Williamson who died a unbearably painful death. But what helps to achieve a sense of unity among the diversified themes, is the value of authenticity(Mller, 36), which means to see things as they are, and reject the

23、temptation of theorizing where things are incomprehensible, or the inclination of bestowing meaning on things that are by nature absurd. 2.1 Harry as an Authentic Observer Within the narrative frame, a montage of images recollected from Hemingways own past were presented(Bonds, 132). These accounts,

24、 written with extreme skillfulness, also form a concrete part of the story. They include Harrys memories about war, his love affairs and the life of men and women as he witnessed in the poor quarters of Paris. What helps to achieve a sense of unity among the extremely diversified recollections, is t

25、he value of authenticity(Mller, 36), which means the capability or willingness to see things as they are, and to reject the temptation of theorizing where things are incomprehensible, or to force meaning on things that are by nature absurd. In this sense, Harry could be counted as an authentic obser

26、ver of his time, as a close examination of the accounts would show. When the Great War broke out in the 1910s, 3 it disrupted the normal order of life and brought death and horror into normal peoples lives, even where they were the least expected. As the following examination of the detailed account

27、s will show, to be authentic means to face the unfamiliar, the incongruous and the failure of reason and the insecurities that they incur. 2.1.1 To Face the Unfamiliar The out-broken of World War I disrupted the normal order of life and brought death and horror into normal peoples lives, even where

28、it is the least expected. People began to see death, which used to be a mysterious subject, now juxtaposed with their dear friends, families, or whatever daily objects that gave one a sense of commonplaceness. And the contrast was shocking as it was displayed in Hemingways account of poppy field hor

29、ror which Harry experienced one night while leaving for Anatolia: That was the day hed first seen dead men wearing white ballet skirts and upturned shoes with pompons on them.Later he had seen the things that he could never think of and later still he had seen much worse.(Hemingway, 21) The image of

30、 “white ballet skirts” and “upturned shoes with pompons on them” conjures up different imaginations for different individuals, but only in rare cases will it be associated with the harsh image of a dead man. A void of expectation was thus created and when the image registered the vision, the impact

31、was immediate. It is common experience that when one is surprised or shocked, he will be unable to think or speak for at least a transient moment. That is often metaphorically described as “losing orientation” as if people had for some reason stepped off the realm of familiarity and into the strange

32、ness. Most will recover by “making sense of” what happened, but in this case, even realizing the strangeness of the picture does not help to put it into any existing mental category. Familiarity may be dull and contempt-breeding, but it also provides a sense of security and comfort. The unfamiliar q

33、uality of his experience, and the difficulty of re-orientation or integrating it into the old system of thinking is what makes it mentally disturbing, and therefore extremely hard to face. As a result, when Harry was 4 back in Paris again he “could not talk about it or stand to have it mentioned”. T

34、he heaviness of truth had weighed him down. Hence the procrastination in writing them down, despite that they could have been extremely valuable and rare writing materials for a writer. 2.1.2 To Face the Incongruous Another characteristic of the accounts is the incongruity of reasoning they displaye

35、d in the place of the much more familiar a priori reasons. In these cases, usually the account, featuring a flow-of-consciousness style, begins with commonplaceness, and often a pleasant touch, and without transition, plunges into a dark ending before the reader even realizes it. This pattern clearl

36、y appeared in the first account in the story: .in the morning at breakfast, looking out the window and seeing snow on the mountains in Bulgaffa and Nansens Secretary asking the old man if it were snow and the old man looking at it and saying, No, thats not snow. Its too early for snow. And the Secre

37、tary repeating to the other girls, No, you see. Its not snow and them all saying, Its not snow we were mistaken. But it was the snow all right and he sent them on into it when he evolved exchange of populations. And it was snow they tramped along in until they died that winter. (Hemingway, 11) One w

38、ho ventures to summarize this story will find an important quality of the original account missing, ie., the absence of a priori reasoning. One is attempted to summarize the story, in a more succinct form, that “an old man made a mistake of judgment and caused the death of a group of people.” But th

39、is would be suspicious of indiscretion of attribution and forcing a false sense of rationality onto a happening which is by its nature absurd. Another example of this pattern is found in his depiction of the hotel proprietor. Hemingway starts with talking about it as a fine season, all were very pleasant and good friends, then came the inflation and the proprietor hanged himself. The plunge into a sudden death is impacting. The use of flow of consciousness in both accounts, is not so much to create a sense of novelty as to preserve the casual manner of absurd truth to the largest extent.